Chinese education tech firm bets big on software service

China's leading education technology company, 17 Education & Technology Group Inc, said it is stepping up its push to become a SaaS software service provider to facilitate the digital transformation and upgrading of the country's education sector.

SaaS refers to Software as a service, which means a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software".

The move came as the Nasdaq-listed company said it will stop its off-campus training services for subjects at the K-12 stage, from kindergarten to 12th grade, in China on December 31.

Instead, the company will focus more on teaching application scenarios such as homework. Recently, the company won the bid for a college project for intelligent homework-based precision teaching and adaptive learning, with a total budget of tens of millions of yuan.

Liu Chang, founder and CEO of 17 Education & Technology Group Inc, said the company will make full use of big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to center on core teaching application scenarios such as homework, and promote the true and normal use of SaaS software services in school education.